[News] Lebanon - Deminers find new cluster bomb sites without Israeli data

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Deminers find new cluster bomb sites without Israeli data
Report, Electronic Lebanon, 23 January 2008
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9247.shtml

[]

Deminers from the Mine Action Group scour farmland in the village of 
Zawtar West in south Lebanon for Israeli-dropped cluster bombs. (Hugh 
Macleod/<http://www.irinnews.org/>IRIN)

ZAWTAR WEST, 22 January (IRIN) - Deminers clearing Israeli-dropped 
cluster bombs in south Lebanon are turning up an average of 10 new 
sites per month, while Israel continues to ignore requests for data 
that would assist clearing the estimated one million unexploded 
bomblets, which continue to kill and maim civilians and decimate 
rural livelihoods. A single cluster bomb can disperse hundreds of bomblets.

"All these weapons systems are computerized and grid references are 
entered before the bombs drop. Not receiving the cluster bomb strike 
data from the Israelis remains our biggest obstacle to clearance," 
Dalya Farran, a spokeswoman for the UN Mine Action Coordination 
Centre for South Lebanon (MACSL), told IRIN.

The UN estimates that Israel rained down around four million bomblets 
-- most US-supplied -- onto south Lebanon in the last three days of 
its 2006 July war with Hizballah fighters, when a ceasefire had 
already been agreed.

In a 24 December report last year 
<http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9185.shtml>the Israeli 
military cleared itself of accusations that it had violated 
international law in its use of cluster bombs to fight Hizballah. In 
a statement, the army said its chief investigator, Maj-Gen Gershon 
HaCohen, said: "It was clear that the majority of the cluster 
munitions were fired at open and uninhabited areas, areas from which 
Hizballah forces operated and in which no civilians were present."

Around one million of the bomblets failed to explode on impact, 
leaving roads, schools, homes and fields littered with lethal 
explosives that detonate when touched, making them a danger similar 
to anti-personnel mines.

More strike sites

Initial estimates by MACSL that most of the unexploded munitions 
would be cleared by the end of last year have been revised to the end 
of this year.

Since the end of the war, over 30 Lebanese have been killed and over 
200 injured, many permanently disabled from the loss of a limb after 
accidentally triggering an unexploded bomblet. The state provides no 
direct support for cluster bomb victims.

At the end of October 2006, two months after the end of the war, 
MACSL recorded 796 individual locations as infected with unexploded 
ordnance, totaling 32 million square meters of land.

By late last month that figure had risen to 961 strike locations, 
totaling 38 million square meters. According to MACSL, 137,000 
bomblets have so far been safely destroyed, mainly in high priority 
areas, such as roads, homes and schools.

Farmers risk all

Tens of thousands of the bomblets still lie on farmland, however, 
making agriculture -- the mainstay of the economy in south Lebanon on 
which 16,000 families depend -- a dangerous and increasingly 
unprofitable pursuit.

A December 2006 report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization 
(FAO) initially found around one quarter of all farmland had been 
infected, though the UN now estimates the figure is higher, and that 
nearly US$100 million in crops had been lost, along with 20,000 livestock.

At the Zawtar West site, 12 kilometers southwest of provincial 
capital Nabatiyeh, Lebanese deminers from Mine Action Group (MAG) 
painstakingly work their way through 70,000 square meters of 
farmland, cutting back precious olive trees in their search for bomblets.

Head of operations at Zawtar West Ghassan Suleiman said many farmers 
continue to plough their fields even knowing the land is littered 
with unexploded ordnance.

"Several farmers could not wait to plant their tobacco and vegetables 
and so took the risk and ploughed," Suleiman told IRIN. "Many farmers 
and shepherds have been injured while sheep and many goats have been 
killed in the past two months, which represents a big loss for farmers."

Tobacco crops have been hit particularly hard, with official figures 
reporting a 20 percent drop in the last harvest. Local farmers say 
their land has been so badly poisoned by the scorching of explosions 
that where 20 kilograms of tobacco plant would have grown, today 
yields on the same soil are just one kilogram.

Many farmers have been forced to abandon their land and lease 
non-infected land, adding a further heavy cost and reducing profits 
for some to less than US$1,000 for the year.

"Worst use"

Zawtar West reveals the extent of the Israeli cluster bomb 
bombardment, which locals say occurred on 13 and 14 August, the last 
two days of the war. In this single, small valley MAG deminers have 
turned up 15 separate strike sites, with each strike site 
representing up to 650 bomblets.

MACSL's Farran compared the use of cluster bombs in south Lebanon 
with their use in Kosovo, an area comparable in size, in which NATO 
war planes dropped cluster bombs as part of a four-month bombing 
campaign in 1999 to drive out Serbian troops.

"In a two-and-a-half-year program, UNMAS [Mine Action Service] 
cleared 25,000 sub-munitions [in Kosovo] and that was 90 percent of 
the problem," she said.

"In Lebanon, in a year and a half, we have cleared 137,000 bomblets, 
plus what have been cleared by the locals [representing just under 14 
percent of the problem]. This was unprecedented and one of the worst, 
if not the worst, use of sub-munitions in history."

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and 
information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the 
United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or 
reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the 
<http://www.irinnews.org/copyright.aspx>copyright page for conditions 
of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of 
Humanitarian Affairs.




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